ROCHESTER — Rochester High School seems like an ordinary high school as you walk down its halls.

Students crowd past each other between classes, arms loaded with books, and the crashes of lockers slamming shut echo through the halls. Posters cheering on the basketball team hang on the walls, along with signs for a winter running and conditioning club.

Step inside a classroom, though, and you will see what gives this school its other name — Zebra New Tech High School.

This week, teachers from Taylor High School and Peru High School visited Zebra New Tech, to see a new tech high school in action. When school starts for the 2010-2011 year at Taylor, it also will be a new tech high school.

Taylor Superintendent John Magers said he has small groups of teachers scheduled to visit Rochester over the next few months.

Peru Superintendent Andrew Melin said he is in the early stages of considering a new tech conversion, but if possible, he would like to implement new tech next fall. He plans to bring more teachers, as well as school board members, to tour Zebra New Tech.

“We are going to be working very hard at seeing what is necessary both financially and in terms of training to make this happen,” Melin said.

A new tech high school is one that uses technology as a tool, and uses student-directed, project-based learning to teach state content standards. It also focuses on 21st century skills like collaboration, communication skills, problem solving, work ethic, critical thinking and technological literacy.

It requires every student to have access to a computer in every classroom, on a one-to-one ratio. Classes are taught through student-directed projects that require students to use skills included in the state standards, along with communication and teamwork skills. Projects are evaluated by a team of community members.

New tech high schools also include classes that combine school subjects, like the scientific studies class at Zebra New Tech, which is a combination of algebra II and physics.

In that class, students work individually on their computers, completing their algebra work on a program called ALEKS. Many wear headphones and listen to music as they work, which student Sam Thomas says helps him focus on the lessons. He said school policy allows students to listen to music when working, but requires them to turn it off during discussions and when teachers are talking.

Thomas likes the new tech concept, and working at his own pace, so “I don’t have to listen to lessons about what I already know. ... It suits me. I think there are other kids who don’t like it.”

He said the algebra program is “self-taught,” but “the teachers are always here to help us.”

Another combined class, American studies includes U.S. history and junior-level English into one class, with two teachers.

Junior Carly Shultz proudly showed her most recent project, in which students created historical documents for people living in the early 1900s, when many immigrants were coming to America.

Shultz and her partner researched a person who immigrated during that time and created passports, newspaper articles, social worker reports and other documents for that person, and then “aged” them to appear authentic. They also had to write the first three chapters of a textbook, “Welcome to America,” telling what they thought were the three most important lessons a new immigrant should know.

She likes the new tech concept, but said some of her classmates do not because of the group projects. Shultz said there are people who don’t contribute their fair share to projects, but those students’ grades in work ethic reflect that. She added that a group has the option to “fire” a member who is not doing the work.

In Amy Blackburn’s biology II class, students work in groups answering questions from their textbooks, a more traditional activity. Blackburn said students recently completed one project and have not started another.

When she begins a project, students receive an entry document explaining what they are to do, along with a list of what is expected from them and what is needed to earn a grade above a B+. Students also get a calendar of when parts of the project are due.

Biology student Morgan Campbell, a junior, said she was in the first new tech class, and she has not liked it because she felt they were learning at the same time their teachers were learning how to teach in the new tech way. She said she would have liked to have had the option to choose between new tech and traditional education.

Campbell said some classes, like foreign language, don’t lend themselves to learning by computer and projects.

Sophomore Lauren Mitchell, also in the biology II class, likes the group projects because she can split the work with other students, and they get both individual and group grades. She also likes being able to use computers in all classes.

Mitchell said teachers are good about not scheduling projects so they are all due at the same time, and she’s found them interesting.

“I feel now I want to do my homework, not that I have to do my homework.”

Her classmate Taylor Showley also likes the projects, which she said make the subject areas more relevant.

“I feel like there’s a reason we’re learning this. We’re not just studying for a test,” she said, adding that students and teachers whose schools start a new tech program should come in with open minds.

“Just give it a chance,” she said.

Madison Benzing, a student ambassador and tour guide, said she likes working independently and then consulting with a teacher when she needs help.

“We can have more of a one-on-one conversation if we’re having difficulties,” she said.

She said the first year was the hardest, because teachers were also learning. The first nine weeks, she said, several teachers has projects due the same week, even the same day, but now “they’ve learned to work around each other.”

Benzing said sometimes teachers assign groups, while other times, they are allowed to pick. She chose to work with a friend on a recent project, but she would not have chosen that friend if she knew the friend wouldn’t do good work. Being assigned to groups means she’s met people she might not have talked to before, she added.

“I think it’s broken up the cliques a lot.”

She said the projects also help her remember what she’s learned when she takes a test, like the graduation qualifying exam.

“When I see a question, I can relate it back to a project we did,” she said.

• Danielle Rush is the Kokomo Tribune education reporter. She can be reached at 765-454-8585 or danielle.rush@kokomotribune.com.